The Hohenzollerns in America: "I have a declaration to make"

By Stephen Leacock

Stephen P H Butler Leacock FRSC was born on 30th December 1869 in Swanmore, near Southampton, England. He was the third of eleven children.

The family emigrated to Canada in 1876, settling on a 100-acre farm in Sutton, Ontario. There Leacock was home-schooled until, funded by his grandfather, he was enrolled into the elite private school Upper Canada College in Toronto. Academically he was very strong. In 1887, at age 17, he became head boy and then proceeded on to the University of Toronto to study languages and literature. Despite completing two years of study in only one, he was obliged to leave the university because his father, an alcoholic, had abandoned the family and finances could not be stretched to continue his attendance. Leacock now enrolled in a three-month course at Strathroy Collegiate Institute to become a qualified high school teacher with a regular income.

He worked at Upper Canada College from 1889 through 1899 and later resumed his studies part-time at the University of Toronto, graduating with a B A in 1891. It was during this period that he was first published in The Varsity, a campus newspaper. But his passion was now economics and political theory. In 1899 he enrolled for postgraduate studies at the University of Chicago and earned his PhD in 1903.

Leacock had married Beatrix Hamilton in 1900 and 15 years later the couple had their only child, Stephen. In time father and son developed a love-hate relationship, partially caused by his son’s diminutive stature of only four feet.

Accepting a post at McGill University Leacock would remain there until he retired in 1936. In 1906, he wrote ‘Elements of Political Science’, quickly adopted as a standard textbook for the next two decades and his most profitable book. He also began public speaking and lecturing, and took a year's leave of absence in 1907 to speak throughout Canada on the subject of national unity.

Leacock had submitted humourous articles to the Toronto magazine Grip in 1894, and was soon published in other Canadian and US magazines. In 1910, he printed privately a collection of these as ‘Literary Lapses’. Acquired by the British publisher, John Lane, it was released in London and New York. He was now a commercially successful writer. There soon followed ‘Nonsense Novels’ (1911) and the sentimental favourite, ‘Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town’ (1912). His ‘Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich’ (1914) is a darker collection that satirizes city life. Collections of sketches continued to be published almost annually, filled with a mixture of light-hearted whimsy, parody, nonsense, and satire.

In later life, he wrote on the art of humour writing and published biographies on Twain and Dickens. Together with continued speaking tours he also added to his non-fiction with many well-regarded and award-winning volumes on Canada.

Politically Leacock was a social conservative and a partisan Conservative. He opposed women’s right to vote and had a varied record on non-English immigration. He was a champion of Empire but an advocate of social welfare legislation and wealth redistribution, but he often caused friction with his racist views towards blacks and Indigenous peoples.

Leacock has for some time been forgotten as an economist, but it’s often quoted that in 1911 more people had heard of him than had heard of Canada. For the decade after 1915 Leacock was the most popular humorist in the English-speaking world.

Stephen Leacock died on 28th March 1944 of throat cancer in Toronto, Canada. He was 74. He was buried in the St George the Martyr Churchyard, Sutton, Ontario.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Horse's Mouth
• Release date: Jan 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9781803543420

Stephen Leacock

Award-winning Canadian humorist and writer Stephen Leacock (1869-1944) was the author of more than 50 literary works, and between 1915 and 1925 was the most popular humorist in the English-speaking world. Leacock’s fictional works include classics like Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town, Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich, and Literary Lapses. In addition to his humor writings, Leacock was an accomplished political theorist, publishing such works as Elements of Political Science and My Discovery of the West: A Discussion of East and West in Canada, for which he won the Governor General's Award for writing in 1937. Leacock’s life continues to be commemorated through the awarding of the Leacock Medal for Humour and with an annual literary festival in his hometown of Orillia, Ontario.

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The Hohenzollerns in America by Stephen Leacock

With The Bolsheviks In Berlin And Other Impossibilities

Stephen P H Butler Leacock FRSC was born on 30th December 1869 in Swanmore, near Southampton, England.  He was the third of eleven children.

The family emigrated to Canada in 1876, settling on a 100-acre farm in Sutton, Ontario.  There Leacock was home-schooled until, funded by his grandfather, he was enrolled into the elite private school Upper Canada College in Toronto.  Academically he was very strong.  In 1887, at age 17, he became head boy and then proceeded on to the University of Toronto to study languages and literature.  Despite completing two years of study in only one, he was obliged to leave the university because his father, an alcoholic, had abandoned the family and finances could not be stretched to continue his attendance.  Leacock now enrolled in a three-month course at Strathroy Collegiate Institute to become a qualified high school teacher with a regular income.

He worked at Upper Canada College from 1889 through 1899 and later resumed his studies part-time at the University of Toronto, graduating with a B A in 1891.  It was during this period that he was first published in The Varsity, a campus newspaper.  But his passion was now economics and political theory.  In 1899 he enrolled for postgraduate studies at the University of Chicago and earned his PhD in 1903.

Leacock had married Beatrix Hamilton in 1900 and 15 years later the couple had their only child, Stephen.  In time father and son developed a love-hate relationship, partially caused by his son’s diminutive stature of only four feet.

Accepting a post at McGill University Leacock would remain there until he retired in 1936.  In 1906, he wrote ‘Elements of Political Science’, quickly adopted as a standard textbook for the next two decades and his most profitable book.  He also began public speaking and lecturing, and took a year's leave of absence in 1907 to speak throughout Canada on the subject of national unity.

Leacock had submitted humourous articles to the Toronto magazine Grip in 1894, and was soon published in other Canadian and US magazines.  In 1910, he printed privately a collection of these as ‘Literary Lapses’.  Acquired by the British publisher, John Lane, it was released in London and New York.   He was now a commercially successful writer.  There soon followed ‘Nonsense Novels’ (1911) and the sentimental favourite, ‘Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town’ (1912).  His ‘Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich’ (1914) is a darker collection that satirizes city life.  Collections of sketches continued to be published almost annually, filled with a mixture of light-hearted whimsy, parody, nonsense, and satire.

In later life, he wrote on the art of humour writing and published biographies on Twain and Dickens.  Together with continued speaking tours he also added to his non-fiction with many well-regarded and award-winning volumes on Canada.

Politically Leacock was a social conservative and a partisan Conservative.  He opposed women’s right to vote and had a varied record on non-English immigration.  He was a champion of Empire but an advocate of social welfare legislation and wealth redistribution, but he often caused friction with his racist views towards blacks and Indigenous peoples.

Leacock has for some time been forgotten as an economist, but it’s often quoted that in 1911 more people had heard of him than had heard of Canada.  For the decade after 1915 Leacock was the most popular humorist in the English-speaking world.

Stephen Leacock died on 28th March 1944 of throat cancer in Toronto, Canada.  He was 74.  He was buried in the St George the Martyr Churchyard, Sutton, Ontario.

Index of Contents

I.—THE HOHENZOLLERNS IN AMERICA

PREFACE

CHAPTER I — On Board the S.S. America. Wednesday

CHAPTER II — City New York. 2nd Avenue

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

II.—WITH THE BOLSHEVIKS IN BERLIN

III.—AFTERNOON TEA WITH THE SULTAN

IV.—ECHOES OF THE WAR

1.—The Boy Who Came Back

2.—The War Sacrifices of Mr. Spugg

3.—If Germany Had Won

4.—War and Peace at the Galaxy Club

5.—The War News as I Remember it

I—THE CABLE NEWS FROM RUSSIA

II—SAMPLE OF SPECIAL CORRESPONDENCE

III—THE TECHNICAL WAR DESPATCHES

IV—THE WAR PROPHECIES

V—DIPLOMATIC REVELATIONS

VI—A NEW GERMAN PEACE FORMULA

VII—THE FINANCIAL NEWS

6.—Some Just Complaints About the War

7.—Some Startling Side Effects of the War

V.—OTHER IMPOSSIBILITIES

1.—The Art of Conversation

Introduction to H.E. the Viceroy of India, K.C.B.,

II—HOW TO OPEN A CONVERSATION

2.—Heroes and Heroines

3.—The Discovery of America;

4.—Politics from Within

5.—The Lost Illusions of Mr. Sims

6.—Fetching the Doctor: From Recollections of Childhood in the Canadian Countryside

Stephen Leacock – A Concise Bibliography

I.—The Hohenzollerns in America

PREFACE

The proper punishment for the Hohenzollerns, and the Hapsburgs, and the Mecklenburgs, and the Muckendorfs, and all such puppets and princelings, is that they should be made to work; and not made to work in the glittering and glorious sense, as generals and chiefs of staff, and legislators, and land-barons, but in the plain and humble part of laborers looking for a job; that they should carry a hod and wield a trowel and swing a pick and, at the day's end, be glad of a humble supper and a night's rest; that they should work, in short, as millions of poor emigrants out of Germany have worked for generations past; that there should be about them none of the prestige of fallen grandeur; that, if it were possible, by some trick of magic, or change of circumstance, the world should know them only as laboring men, with the dignity and divinity of kingship departed out of them; that, as such, they should stand or fall, live or starve, as best they might by the work of their own hands and brains. Could this be done, the world would have a better idea of the thin stuff out of which autocratic kingship is fashioned.

It is a favourite fancy of mine to imagine this transformation actually brought about; and to picture the Hohenzollerns as an immigrant family departing for America, their trunks and boxes on their backs, their bundles in their hands.

The fragments of a diary that here follow present the details of such a picture. It is written, or imagined to be written, by the (former) Princess Frederica of Hohenzollern. I do not find her name in the Almanach de Gotha. Perhaps she does not exist. But from the text below she is to be presumed to be one of the innumerable nieces of the German Emperor.

CHAPTER I — On Board the S.S. America. Wednesday

At last our embarkation is over, and we are at sea. I am so glad it is done. It was dreadful to see poor Uncle William and Uncle Henry and Cousin Willie and Cousin Ferdinand of Bulgaria, coming up the gang-plank into the steerage, with their boxes on their backs. They looked so different in their rough clothes. Uncle William is wearing an old blue shirt and a red handkerchief round his neck, and his hair looks thin and unkempt, and his moustache draggled and his face unshaved. His eyes seem watery and wandering, and his little withered arm so pathetic. Is it possible he was always really like that?

At the top of the gang-plank he stood still a minute, his box still on his back, and said, This then is the pathway to Saint Helena. I heard an officer down on the dock call up, Now then, my man, move on there smartly, please. And I saw some young roughs pointing at Uncle and laughing and saying, Look at the old guy with the red handkerchief. Is he batty, eh?

The forward deck of the steamer, the steerage deck, which is the only place that we are allowed to go, was crowded with people, all poor and with their trunks and boxes and paper bags all round them. When Uncle set down his box, there was soon quite a little crowd around him, so that I could hardly see him. But I could hear them laughing, and I knew that they were taking a rise out of him, as they call it,—just as they did in the emigration sheds on shore. I heard Uncle say, Let wine be brought: I am faint; and some one else said, Yes, let it, and there arose a big shout of laughter.

Cousin Willie had sneaked away with his box down to the lower deck. I thought it mean of him not to stay with his father. I never noticed till now what a sneaking face Cousin Willie has. In his uniform, as Crown Prince, it was different. But in his shabby clothes, among these rough people, he seems so changed. He walks with a mean stoop, and his eyes look about in such a furtive way, never still. I saw one of the ship's officers watching him, very closely and sternly.

Cousin Karl of Austria, and Cousin Ruprecht of Bavaria, are not here. We thought they were to come on this ship, but they are not here. We could hardly believe that the ship would sail without them.

I managed to get Uncle William out of the crowd and down below. He was glad to get off the deck. He seemed afraid to look at the sea, and when we got into the big cabin, he clutched at the cover of the port and said, Shut it, help me shut it, shut out the sound of the sea; and then for a little time he sat on one of the bunks all hunched up, and muttering, Don't let me hear the sea, don't let me hear it. His eyes looked so queer and fixed, that I thought he must be in a sort of fit, or seizure. But Uncle Henry and Cousin Willie and Cousin Ferdinand came into the cabin and he got better again.

Cousin Ferdinand has got hold of a queer long overcoat with the sleeves turned up, and a little round hat, and looks exactly like a Jew. He says he traded one of our empty boxes for the coat and hat. I never noticed before how queer and thick Cousin Ferdinand's speech is, and how much he gesticulates with his hands when he talks. I am sure that when I visited at Sofia nobody ever noticed it. And he called Uncle William and Uncle Henry Mister, and said that on the deck he had met two fine gentlemen, (that's what he called them), who are in the clothing trade in New York. It was with them he traded for the coat.

Cousin Ferdinand, who is very clever at figures, is going to look after all our money, because the American money is too difficult for Uncle William and Cousin Willie to understand. We have only a little money, but Cousin Ferdinand said that we would put it all together and make it a pool. But when Uncle Henry laughed, and turned his pockets out and had no money at all, Cousin Ferdinand said that it would NOT be a pool. He said he would make it on shares and explained it, but I couldn't understand what it meant.

While he was talking I saw Cousin Willie slip one of the pieces of money out of the pile into his pocket: at least I think I saw it; but he did it so quickly that I was not sure, and didn't like to say anything.

Then a bell rang and we went to eat in a big saloon, all crowded with common people, and very stuffy. The food was wretched, and I could not eat. I suppose Uncle was famished from the long waiting and the bad food in the emigrant shed. It was dreadful to see the hungry way that he ate the greasy stew they gave us, with his head down almost in his plate and his moustache all unkempt. This ragout is admirable, he said. Let the chef be informed that I said it.

Cousin Ferdinand didn't sit with us. He sat beside his two new friends and they had their heads all close together and talked with great excitement. I never knew before that Cousin Ferdinand talked Yiddish. I remember him at Sofia, on horseback addressing his army, and I don't think he talked to his troops in Yiddish. He was telling them, I remember, how sorry he was that he couldn't accompany them to the front. But for business in Sofia, he said, he would like to be in the very front trenches, the foremost of all. It was thought very brave of him.

When we got up from supper, the ship was heaving and rolling quite a bit. A young man, a steward, told us that we were now out of the harbor and in the open sea. Uncle William told him to convey his compliments to the captain on his proper navigation of the channel. The young man looked very closely at Uncle and said, Sure, I'll tell him right away, but he said it kindly. Then he said to me, when Uncle couldn't hear, Your pa ain't quite right, is he, Miss Hohen? I didn't know what he meant, but, of course, I said that Uncle William was only my uncle. Hohen is, I should explain, the name by which we are known now. The young man said that he wasn't really a steward, only just for the trip. He said that, because I had a strange feeling that I had met him before, and asked him if I hadn't seen him at one of the courts. But he said he had never been up before one in his life. He said he lives in New York, and drives an ice-wagon and is an ice-man. He said he was glad to have the pleasure of our acquaintance. He is, I think, the first ice-man I have ever met. He reminds me very much of the Romanoffs, the Grand Dukes of the younger branch, I mean. But he says he is not connected with them, so far as he knows. He said his name is Peters. We have no Almanach de Gotha here on board the steamer, so I cannot look up his name.

S.S. America. Thursday

We had a dreadful experience last night. In the middle of the night Uncle Henry came and called me and said that Uncle William was ill. So I put on an old shawl and went with him. The ship was pitching and heaving with a dreadful straining and creaking noise. A dim light burned in the cabin, and outside there was a great roaring of the wind and the wild sound of the sea surging against the ship.

Uncle William was half sitting up in his rough bunk, with the tattered gray blankets over him, one hand was clutched on the side of the bed and there was a great horror in his eyes. The sea; the sea, he kept saying, don't let me hear it. It's THEIR voices. Listen! They're beating at the sides of the ship. Keep them from me, keep them out!

He was quiet for a minute, until there came another great rush of the sea against the sides of the ship, and a roar of water against the port. Then he broke out, almost screaming—"Henry, brother Henry, keep them back! Don't let them drag me